When the chorus hits - “Lean on me / When you’re not strong / I’ll be your friend / I’ll help you carry on” - Withers jumps up an octave, and you can hear him pleading, just a bit. Withers sings in his warm, graceful baritone, and his melody is campfire-singalong stuff, direct and uncluttered. The more substantial kind of love is when you want to touch people and care for them when they’re at their worst. Romantic love, you only wanna touch people because they’re pretty and they appeal to you physically. The consistent kind of love is that kind that will make you go over and wipe mucus and saliva from somebody’s face after they become brain dead. Romantic love is the most fickle thing in the world. Years later, Withers said that his label didn’t understand what he was doing because he wasn’t writing about romantic love:
It’s a pledge of friendship, of support, through bad times. “Lean On Me” is a love song, but it’s not a standard love song. He wrote “Lean On Me” one day when he was noodling at the piano, running his hands up and down the keyboard, and the phrase popped into his head. But when the “Ain’t No Sunshine” money started rolling in, he bought himself a Wurlitzer. Withers had come up singing and playing acoustic guitar. On the cover of Just As I Am, his debut album, he’s standing outside that factory in Burbank, holding his lunchbox. (It’s a 10, obviously.) Withers kept that factory job for a while even after “Ain’t No Sunshine” came out, convinced that his success would be fleeting. He was 32 by the time he hit with “ Ain’t No Sunshine,” a mystical soul-blues lament that peaked at #2 in 1971. Withers spent years working in an aircraft factory. When he got out, Withers decided he’d try to make it as a songwriter, so he sold his furniture to a co-worker and used the money to move to Los Angeles. He’d signed up for the Navy at the age of 18, and he’d stayed in the Navy for nine years. Here’s a wonderful acoustic performance of another one of his classic songs: Bill Withers sings Ain’t No Sunshine in 1972.Withers was well into his 30s by the time he got famous. While many of Withers’ biggest songs were recorded in the Seventies, they have proven to be timeless hits.
Songs like “ Lean On Me,” “ Grandma’s Hands,” “ Use Me,” “ Ain’t No Sunshine,” and “ Lovely Day” are embedded in the culture and have been covered countless times. The three-time Grammy winner released just eight albums before walking away from the spotlight in 1985, but he left an incredible mark on the music community and the world at large. From Rolling Stone on his renowned impact on music, with Spotify links: Withers passed away in March of 2020 at the age of 81. The closeness of the energy-filled audience surrounding him helps make this performance a stand-out. Soul legend Bill Withers sings Lean on Me on the hit American music-dance television program Soul Train in the early 1970s, possibly 1972 or ’74.
0 kommentar(er)
